


Welcome to the Radiant Garden Party Planning Committee

by ellevaire



Category: Final Fantasy, Kingdom Hearts
Genre: Appearances by FFXIII and FFXV characters, Fluff, Gen, Lowkey Cloud/Leon, Mild spoilers for various games, No Angst, post-kh3
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-24
Updated: 2019-02-24
Packaged: 2019-11-04 18:43:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,434
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17903498
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ellevaire/pseuds/ellevaire
Summary: Leon isn't sure what Sora's been doing lately, but between newcomers and reconstruction, he's had his hands full in Radiant Garden. Occurs during but mostly post-Kingdom Hearts 3, contains mild spoilers for Final Fantasies XIII and XV. All fluff and no angst, kind of a fix it. Idk.





	Welcome to the Radiant Garden Party Planning Committee

**Author's Note:**

  * For [driedupwishes](https://archiveofourown.org/users/driedupwishes/gifts).



> this is pure fluff based on a conversation I had with driedupwishes and written for her birthday. I hope u have a wonderful day!!

Slowly but surely, newcomers arrive in Radiant Gardens from scattered corners of the universe. 

The first group is a ragtag bunch from somewhere called Cocoon. The smaller of the two pink ones, Vanille, tells Leon their world is safe, but not home anymore, partially because they all just spent several hundred years trapped in crystal. She arrived with her sister, Fang, and introduces the other pink one as Lightning (“call me Light”) and the only boy in the group as Hope. 

Their eyes are weary. Leon doesn’t ask questions, and directs them to Aerith, who will get them set up in temporary housing. 

Besides, the population of Radiant Garden isn’t what it once was; its time as Hollow Bastion took a toll on the population none of them like to think too much about, and many of the survivors are settled elsewhere, now. Leon’s proud of the work the Restoration Committee has done—they all are, though you’d have to twist Cloud’s arm to get him to admit it—and it’s gratifying to have people actually want to live there again. 

The second group arrives by way of the newly opened interplanetary path from Twilight Town. Leon isn’t sure what their relationship is, but three of them seem to defer to the fourth, a kind of surly but tired looking (a face Cloud wears often) kid named Noctis with perpetually untidy black hair. The one who can’t keep his fucking shirt on (Gladio) explains that their world was swallowed by darkness for a while, and Leon’s heart hammers painfully until the newcomers explain their world’s darkness was only kind of related to the darkness Sora always seems to be fighting. He lets out a breath, realizing Sora is still okay.

Leon gets them all cups of coffee while the small blond one, Prompto, explains that Sora helped them, actually. He looks uncannily like Lightning’s little brother Hope, but taller, twitchier, and with more freckles. 

“He found Noct in the crystal and did something to his heart? There was like, a keyhole or something and he and Noct sealed away the darkness?” Prompto sort-of explains. He looks like his brain is going a mile a minute.

Leon hadn’t realized being trapped in crystal was such a common hazard on other planets. He tells them as much. 

Gladio laughs, Ignis snorts, and Noctis gives an exhausted half-smile before dropping his head to Leon’s kitchen table, where he soon falls asleep. Prompto reaches for Noctis’s mostly-full mug of coffee, but receives a quick, light slap on the hand from Ignis for his trouble. They sit around, talking quietly—Ignis seems reluctant to wake Noctis, but he wakes up on his own after maybe forty-five minutes for dinner. 

Leon directs them to Aerith too, watching them the short distance down the cobblestone road, shaking his head when Noctis jumps on Prompto to ride piggyback and receives a whiny “Duuuude!” in protest. Despite the trauma they wear on their sleeves (or, uh, biceps, in Gladio’s case) they rib each other constantly, laughing the whole way down the street. 

With a slight smile on his face, Leon turns back inside. He enjoys approximately three minutes of peace, silently contemplating what the fuck he can feed the five people who will inevitably show up unannounced for dinner before Cloud returns with Yuffie in tow. Leon can see laughter all over her face, but Cloud is stoic as ever as he removes his boots and the frankly ridiculous floor length overcoat that he’s had for way too long. Even Leon has stopped making fun of it. It’s not fun anymore.

“What’s so funny?” he asks, crossing his arms over his chest. Yuffie bursts into giggles again. Cloud reaches into his satchel, pulling out a lumpy package wrapped neatly in rough brown paper. 

“Here,” he says, handing over the package. Leon is immediately suspicious, since Cloud has been known to toss everything from materia to his godsdamned buster sword at him from across the room. 

“For me?”

Cloud grunts, as economical with his words as he always is. They’ve gotten better about communicating, especially now that they live together, but Cloud isn’t really one for open displays of sentimentality. Curious, Leon starts peeling the tape away from the paper, careful not to rip it too much. 

“What is this?” 

“Stop being such a baby about ripping the paper and you’ll find out,” Cloud says. He’s turned away, pouring himself a glass of water, but Leon has known him long enough to confidently bet his face is beet red. 

Leon thinks about ignoring him out of spite, but curiosity wins out and he does as he’s told. 

It’s a mug. 

More specifically, it’s an extremely tacky mug, but Leon can’t help the grin that spreads across his face when he sees it. It’s large and black, with white text on the front that reads, “#1 Gunblade Dad.” Below that are the stylized wings emblazoned on the jacket he always wears. It’s thoughtful, if not slightly confusing. Cloud turns around, his face still faintly pink, and Yuffie makes an excuse to leave the room.

“It’s, because, you know, you’ve worked so hard to restore the Garden and you still somehow take care of all of us,” Cloud says, making steady eye contact with the floor. “So I—I mean, we—wanted to give you a small token of our appreciation.” 

Leon feels his face soften. 

“We’ve done a good job, haven’t we?” he asks, and Cloud nods. 

It’s a nice moment, ruined only seconds later when Aerith bounces through the door with a, “Sorry, sorry, please don’t be mad, I told them they could come.” Leon is confused until the crystal trauma collective wanders in behind, conversing loudly. 

He rolls his eyes to keep up appearances, setting the mug on top of the fridge where no one can touch it. It’s physically impossible to get mad at Aerith for any measure of time, but Leon digs deep to spare a second of exasperation at her compassion. Still.

“Aerith, we have gummiphones for a reason,” he reminds her.

He’s used to having the usual gang around for dinner; he, Cloud, Aerith, Yuffie, Tifa and Cid eat together most nights of the week. Even if he doesn’t always stay on top of groceries, there’s usually pasta on hand, but the single dusty box of noodles in the cupboard would be a stretch for six people. It’s not going to cut it for fourteen, especially if Gladio eats anywhere near as much as Tifa. 

“Pardon me,” Ignis says, primly pushing his glasses up his nose. “But Lady Aerith directed me to the market, and I’ve brought some ingredients. I thought I might cook for the group, if that suits you.” He holds up two enormous paper bags.

Leon very kindly doesn’t snort at Ignis’s “Lady Aerith”. It’s not his fault he hasn’t seen her burp the alphabet or do something moronic, like cast Holy on her hands and try to grab a hot tray out of the oven “just to see if it would protect her.”

(It didn’t, because the oven is heated with gas, not destructive magic.)

“Yeah, that would be great, thanks,” Leon says a little awkwardly. 

It’s not that his friends don’t help him, it’s just that they’re not capable cooks in any way, shape, or form. The responsibility has fallen to him by virtue of his age, which is by all accounts honestly the _ dumbest possible reason, Cid is literally forty-three years old _ , but they’ve had this argument too often for it to be meaningful anymore. So. He’s more than happy to turn his kitchen over to someone as competent as Ignis seems to be.

Ignis has somehow found three rice cookers, which are soon filled to the brim with steaming hot rice. In the meantime, he’s made some sort of stew that’s simmering away on the stove. It smells delicious, full of spiced chicken and peppers and onions that Noctis turns up his nose at. Leon can only stare, amazed, never having seen so much food in his kitchen before. 

“I hope this is enough,” Ignis says. His eyebrows are pinched with worry. Leon just stares at him.

There isn’t a dining room table in Radiant Garden big enough to hold all of them, and they end up sprawled across the living room in various states of comfort. It’s reassuring in the sense that he knows they’re all going to get along, if the way Gladio and call-me-Light’s girlfriend Fang are talking animatedly about behemoth slaying is any indicator. Across the room, Noctis is sitting on the floor, letting Prompto use his head as a table from the chair above him. Occasionally Noctis holds up a forkful of vegetables from his bowl, which Prompto eats obligingly.

The food is delicious, and Leon tells Ignis as much, although he realizes this is both a blessing and a curse in that Ignis must never be subjected to Leon’s cooking because his jarred sauce and dusty pasta cannot possibly compare. 

Dinner ends definitively when Noctis and Yuffie start comparing their stupidly oversized shurikens in Leon’s living room. 

“Yeah, it's called like, the Star of the Rogue or whatever, but I like to call it Stabby Buddy,” Leon hears Noctis say.

“Where did he even get that?” Cloud whispers, horrified, from behind Leon. “It came out of nowhere and it’s  _ huge. _ ”

Leon gives him an unimpressed look, just in case Cloud has forgotten his own weapon is six feet long and weighs seventy pounds. 

“Shut up.” 

“That’s what she said.”

“Shut UP.”

Cloud, always the quiet one, sticks mostly to the corner, hiding behind Leon when Fang and Gladio start arm wrestling over the coffee table.  _ Why _ Gladio thinks taking his shirt off after the first loss will help him win the second round, Leon doesn’t know. After three straight losses it seems pretty definitive that Gladio isn’t any stronger when he’s half-dressed, but Leon’s pretty sure that won’t stop him in the future. Behind Fang, Light stands with her arms crossed, a tiny, smug smile on her face. 

The gathering starts breaking up after that. Noctis looks like he’s about to fall asleep again, now curled up next to Prompto on the chair. Prompto doesn’t seem to mind; they’re both laughing quietly, Prompto’s skinny arm draped lightly over Noctis’s shoulder. Ignis hands Gladio his shirt, smiling with a patient familiarity. Cid is the first to go, followed by Yuffie. Vanille steers Hope toward the door and then, it seems, they all file out one after another. Aerith is last out the door with a cheerful wave, and then the house is down to just Leon and Cloud. 

Someone, probably Aerith, has rinsed the dishes (using Watera, if the puddle on the countertop is any indication) and put them in the dishwasher, and when Leon opens his refrigerator he finds neatly packaged leftovers on the top shelf. He’s dead tired, but takes a moment to wipe down the countertop, wash out the mug Cloud brought him and set it by the coffeepot for the morning. Leon takes an extra second to admire it before Cloud calls to him from the other room and it’s time for bed.

Neither Leon nor Cloud sleep well, and Leon admits he’s worried about everyone over coffee and frozen waffles the next morning. 

“Me too,” Cloud says.

“I hope Sora’s okay,” Leon says, checking his phone anxiously, even though he knows Sora doesn’t have his number or even a phone, to his knowledge.

“Me too,” Cloud says, patting Leon’s shoulder. 

“They all seem nice enough, though,” Leon says brightly. 

Cloud nods, then shudders. “Fang is scary,” he says seriously. “I am honestly terrified of what will happen when she and Tifa start spending time together.” 

“Maybe it’ll be better than we think,” Leon says doubtfully. 

***

Slowly but surely, everyone starts to take roots in Radiant Garden. The original crew settles back into their work after the minor disruption of helping the newcomers figure out what their roles in their new community will be. 

Leon is surprised but pleased to discover Lightning wants to help him run security in Radiant Garden. He’s learned not to be skeptical of women, knowing all too well the Garden would entirely fall apart without Aerith, Yuffie, and Tifa’s hard work. Leon likes to think he and Cloud have always respected their friends, but nothing reinforced that they’re just the girls’ muscle like rebuilding the city from scratch. 

Still, he’s impressed and surprised when Lightning crushes a shadow heartless with two stomps of her thick-soled black boot on their way to the office. Leon spends most of the day teaching her the ins and outs of the system, and by the end of the week he suspects she knows more about Radiant Garden’s security than he does. He wonders what her home world was like. 

Every one of them has adapted remarkably well, seeming to find jobs they’re at least interested in. Fang and Gladio, both good with their hands and strong as fuck, are on the build team putting up houses with Tifa. Cloud has started taking Hope on deliveries. Prompto and Vanille both gravitated to Aerith, who has Vanille on the welcoming committee and Prompto hard at work documenting their efforts, and soon Leon wishes Ignis had been with them at the outset. Within two weeks, Ignis has single-handedly organized their admittedly lax filing system and is acting as a project manager. It’s remarkable, really. 

The only one who hasn’t found a dedicated role is Noctis, but he seems content enough to do whatever odd jobs anyone needs done. It helps them all get more done, although more than once Leon sees Noctis walking through the Garden followed by a trail of cats. 

“He has like, really high animal proficiency, dude,” Prompto tells him when he makes an offhand remark about it a few weeks later. 

Talking about Noctis for almost any length of time makes Prompto’s eyes go all misty in one breath and in the next Prompto lovingly insults him, and Leon quickly steers the conversation back to the matter at hand, which is: He needs to learn how to take photos with his gummiphone. He and Cloud have been living in their house for a little over a year now, and the walls are so distressingly bare that Aerith frowns every time she comes over. More than once Leon has suggested getting weapons racks so he and Cloud can hang their swords over the fireplace, but for some reason this makes Aerith frown even harder. 

It’s probably for the best. He’s not sure they could find a mount that holds the seventy-pound brick Cloud calls a sword.

So, photos it is, except he doesn’t have any. The gummiphones are a recent development from Cid and the chipmunks. Leon and Cloud know how to do video and voice calls and send each other text messages with little, specially-made emojis (Cloud’s contact is saved in his phone as three buster sword emojis and nothing else) but they’re so busy that’s pretty much...all they know how to do. 

Prompto, their resident selfie expert, explains it in a way a five-year-old could understand. Leon takes a practice selfie. He looks simultaneously pained and confused. In the background, Prompto poses with the practiced enthusiasm of someone who has been meticulously documenting his friends for years, while Lightning looks like she can and will murder someone at the slightest provocation which is, to say, she’s wearing her normal resting face. 

All in all, it’s a humorous first effort, but it’s not good enough. It highlights just how much practice they all need at being fun, normal twentysomethings. It’s a Friday and it’s quiet, so Leon rather spontaneously decides to take a rare afternoon off. Lightning raises her eyebrow at him. 

“Wow, leaving work a whole—” she checks her watch, “twenty-two minutes early,” she says in her regular deadpan. 

They’re still getting used to each other, so Leon has no idea if she’s joking with him or genuinely judging him. As he and Prompto leave the building, Leon watches Noctis walk past, followed by his usual entourage of eight or nine stray cats. He’s wearing tight jeans and a t-shirt whose sleeves have been rolled up to make room for a bandana tied around his right bicep, matching Prompto. Except Noctis keeps pulling treats out of it and feeding them to the cats. No wonder they love him so much. 

“Noct, is your new job just Leon paying you to be a scratching post for the cats, or—?” Prompto yells across the square.

Noctis shoots Prompto a glare that would bring lesser men to their knees. Prompto, however, seems unfazed. 

“If you're like, into being roughed up, all you gotta do is tell me,” he yells.

“Better than getting paid to be a selfie consultant,” Noctis says, laughing. He punches Prompto lightly in the shoulder.

It’s actually a relief that Prompto ditches him to follow Noctis around like one of the stray cats, because Leon is tired of being made fun of for not being able to take selfies. Leon takes a picture of Noctis and Promtpo's retreating backs and the herd of cats as they walk toward the central square. 

With nothing better to do, Leon walks up to the Bailey. It's sunset, and now that things are relatively calm, he's starting to get grand notions of focusing on himself for once. Maybe it would be nice to hang a picture of Radiant Garden at sunset hanging in his living room. Leon is surprised he doesn't have to swat down some Heartless at the top of the stairs. 

He gets his photo and pauses a moment on the stone wall. Just as he's wondering if something happened to Sora, a door materializes out of absolutely nowhere. It opens slowly, but Leon is less concerned than he would normally be. It seems like bad dudes use portals, while the doors are exclusive to— 

“See, I told you it would work!” someone says. The voice is familiar, but a pitch lower than Leon is used to. 

“I never said it wouldn't, dingus, I'm just worried about you after last time,” someone else says patiently. It's not a voice Leon recognizes. 

“Leon!” the first voice yells and yep, that's definitely Sora trying to tackle hug him. Sora lets him go, freeing Leon's pinned arms and allowing Leon to give him a real hug. 

Sora looks pretty much the same as the last time they all saw him, maybe a little taller, his hair maybe a little longer and spikier. The second boy is taller than Sora, with white hair and striking green eyes, and it finally clicks who he's looking at. 

Leon says. “You must be—” at the same time Riku says, “Riku.” They all laugh, and Leon gives Sora a look of wide-eyed surprise. 

“So, you finally found Riku, huh?” Leon asks, crossing his arms over his chest. 

He lets Sora tell him all about it on the way back to his and Cloud's house, glad that everything seems to have worked out for him. As long as he known Sora, the kid had been looking for Riku. He had cried on Leon's couch about it last time they had seen each other, and to see him absolutely beaming is...nice. 

A weight has started to lift in Leon’s chest, and it gets lighter as they walk back toward his and Cloud’s house. 

“So, what’s been going on around here?” Sora asks.

“What, you lose your memories again?” Leon asks, rapping his knuckles lightly on Sora’s spiky head. On Sora’s other side, Riku laughs quietly. 

“No, really!” Sora bounces along, unbothered by the jab. “There are a ton of new pathways open, has anyone new arrived?” He asks, just as Prompto comes into view. Prompto is, naturally, forcing Noctis to pose in some absolutely ludicrous positions by the fountain in the square. 

Sora starts walking with purpose to catch up with Prompto. Riku rolls his eyes. 

“Sure is hard to keep up with him,” Leon says.

“Tell me about it,” Riku says, rolling his eyes. They look very fond, but also very tired. “I’ve been trying for like sixteen years now and look where that got me.” 

“I’m still right here,” Sora says. 

“We know,” says Riku. 

The commotion attracts the attention of both Prompto and Noctis, and Prompto jogs over, waving his arms. Noctis, who Leon has never seen move faster than an amble, joins them a minute later. Prompto and Sora do a complicated handshake thing. Maybe the real mistake is allowing  _ those _ two in the same space together. 

“Dude,” Prompto says, eyeing Riku. “Is that—?”

Sora nods with a smile that splits his face in half. 

“And did you—?” 

Sora nods again, bouncing on the balls of his feet. Riku rolls his eyes. 

“What about you?” Sora asks, playing it cool. They’re speaking an entirely different language. Leon is utterly lost.

“Dude, yeah,” Prompto says, grabbing Noctis’s hand. Noctis rolls his eyes but smiles one of the tiny, hopelessly besotted smiles he usually saves for when no one is looking.

“Dude!” 

“Yeah, dude!”

“Dudes, can we move this party back to where the dinner is, please?” Leon says finally, pointing toward his house. 

***

The gang is, naturally, very excited to see Sora. Between Ignis and Vanille, they actually have a pretty well-established kitchen running that expands to accommodate the two newcomers with little effort. 

With a little help from Riku, Sora recounts the last few months of his life. As the story grows weirder and more...time travel-y, Leon shares increasingly worried glances with Cloud across the table. 

“...But it’s all good now!” Sora says, gesturing wildly with his fork. “And everyone from Destiny Islands wants to visit someday, but the pathway got cut off and it took us a little trial and error to find you,” he explains. Riku gently tugs Sora’s wrist down so he’s not flinging potato bits across the table. 

***

Maybe the biggest change, aside from Sora and his friends saving the universe or whatever from turning into a realm of unrelenting darkness, is that another birthday has come and gone for Sora without any sort of celebration.

“That’s unacceptable,” Yuffie says at breakfast the next morning, while Tifa nods in agreement.

Leon agrees, partially because yeah, Sora’s sixteen now and that’s nothing to shake a stick at, and partially because maybe agreeing will get the girls out of his house since they have no reason to be there. He’s not sure when his home became the de facto home base for everything (actually, he knows exactly when it was and it was when Merlin followed Scrooge to Twilight Town, the bastard) but his living room soon becomes the hub for the newly formed Radiant Garden Party Planning Committee. 

There’s not even that much to plan, really, but it soon turns into a combo celebration of Sora’s age and the fact that they’re not all miserable little Heartless right now, and things get more...involved than initially anticipated. Tifa works out a pretty damn stellar menu of alcoholic and non-alcoholic mixed drinks. Ignis makes a cake that would make the chef at Scrooge’s bistro weep with joy. Aerith...puts up streamers.

There’s dinner, and they didn’t really think through the traditional gift-giving aspect of the party, but but being surrounded by the people Sora holds dear seems to be enough. Leon catches him getting misty-eyed more than once and realizes that maybe all of this does get to the kid more than he lets on. 

It’s not Leon’s fault he’s a sucker and that he’d do pretty much anything in his power to cheer Sora up. It’s just. He thought cutting a cake with the buster sword would go better than it did. 

The table is going to need replacing, that’s for sure. He glances at both Cloud and Ignis apologetically. Cloud shrugs. Ignis looks like he has seen worse, and judging by the secretive grins on Noctis and Gladio’s faces, he probably has seen worse.

“Coffee, anyone?” Leon says to dispel the weirdness, and puts the percolator on. 

He immediately gets distracted by Cloud and then Fang coming over to talk to him about a giant heartless she tracked down over the course of the few days. It’s good though, because it means they’ll be able to immediately make progress on that area of Radiant Garden when they get there instead of dealing with it. 

Lightning returns with a steaming mug of coffee in her hand while Fang is updating him on her next hunts. He does a double take. 

Lightning is holding his #1 Gunblade Dad mug in her calloused hand. Not only is she holding it, but Leon swears she makes incredibly deliberate eye contact as she takes a sip of steaming black coffee. 

On his left, Cloud looks like he might have a stroke from laughing too hard. 

“You...you stole my mug,” Leon says, too bewildered to think of anything else. 

Yuffie appears out of nowhere behind him and pats Leon on the shoulder with maybe the least genuine apology look on her face ever. 

“There, there,” she says, fully rubbing his shoulder blade now. “You’re still my number one disappointed dad.”

“Not to be rude, and stuff,” Leon says, suddenly wondering why this is the hill he’s choosing to die on on this, a random Thursday night, “But Cloud gave that to me. It’s so specific. You can’t use it.” 

The second the words are out of his mouth he regrets them. It’s just a mug. There is nothing right now that does not matter less than this mug. Lightning gives him a level stare.

“Are you implying I cannot be a father?” she asks in her scary deadpan. 

“Um, you should be whatever you want to be,” Leon says. Cloud is now doubled over in laughter, probably entirely ruining the dark, brooding persona they’ve all been lovingly putting up with for years. Even Fang’s mouth is twitching in mirth. 

It’s attracting almost everyone’s attention now. Sora’s head pops up from where he and Noctis are comparing weapons in the corner (“I don’t have a keyblade but I do have this giant fork,” Noctis says, and he needs to stop whipping weapons out of the Armiger inside, but the fork is very amusing). 

“What’d I miss?” Sora asks, his keyblade disappearing in a burst of rainbow-colored sparks. 

“Nothing,” Leon says, smiling fondly. “Same as it always was.”

**Author's Note:**

> idk! there you have it. I thought about bringing in the rest of the destiny islands gang but ran out of time, although maybe in the future I will continue who knows


End file.
